Following up on yesterday's Legion build, we have a closer look at the Order Hall portals which appear to be replacement for Class Teleport spells. We also have new Warcraft movie posters, a look at Demonology Warlock spell animations, and additional Alpha feedback.

Dalaran Order Hall Portals

This Legion build added a number of Order Hall portals to Dalaran. The catch? Your personal Order Hall teleports are now removed. You'll now have to go back to Dalaran (unless you were already a class with a teleport spell like Death Knights) to access your Order Hall portal.

Warlords of Draenor was criticized for not emphasizing capital cities--this change ensures that you'll be visiting Dalaran frequently.

Warcraft Movie Posters

Alpha Feedback

This feedback covers Shadow Priests, Holy Paladins, and Discipline Priests. (Edit: we've added another round of posts from Friday afternoon on Balance Druids and PvP, among other topics.) For a look at earlier feedback, please check out yesterday's post which includes notes on upcoming spell changes which did not make it into this build.Balance Druids

Celestalon

We think this will help in a number of ways. It will help with AP generation in AoE situations, letting you actually use Starfall more often. It will help maintain AP generation in movement-heavy situations. And it will help make AP generation more consistent.

Shadow Priests

Celestalon

Hey Void-dwellers. Let’s talk a bit about Shadow, shall we? There are a variety of topics to touch on:

Re: Multidotting and AoE in GeneralShadow is one of our most heavily DoT-based specs, and that implies that multidotting should be their preferred method of attacking several enemies at once. But, unlike Affliction, your rotation also includes direct damage spells as well (especially the Void abilities). So, we need to make sure that a balance is struck between the two. Our goal is that you can apply your DoTs whenever you want, but that you’ll prefer to do so while not in Forma del Vacío, so that you can spend more of your Forma del Vacío time nuking the life out of your enemies with Descarga del Vacíos and the like. We’ve got this cool cyclical rotation going on, in and out of Forma del Vacío, trying to stay in Forma del Vacío as long as possible and then getting back into it as fast as possible. But multidotting doesn’t really fit into that well right now; it slows down your rotation massively, and requires reapplying DoTs to multiple targets while in Forma del Vacío, leading to longer times out of Forma del Vacío, and shorter times in Forma del Vacío. That doesn’t flow very well, so we’re going to make some changes to try to solve that:

Toque vampírico and Palabra de las Sombras: dolor will generate a small amount of Insanity on cast (same amount per cast time as Tortura mental). This should let you multidot without slowing down your Insanity generation rate. To preemptively answer why we don’t put Insanity generation of DoT tick, it’s primarily for two reasons: A) we tried it internally and found that it made Insanity generation feel very disconnected from your actions, feeling more like a constantly-generating resource like Energy, and b) it would scale exceptionally well with target count, leading to unacceptable overall Forma del Vacío uptimes when multiple targets were around, and too stark of a feeling difference between single- and multi-target situations. Insanity generation on cast doesn’t have either of these issues, so we’re going with that.

Re: Ramp Up TimeFor the cyclical rotation to work, it’s important that there is significant time on both sides of the Forma del Vacío line. And the Demencia persistente letting you speed the cycle up as you maintain it creates some really fun gameplay. But that first ramp up of the fight can feel like it drags on to some, and so we want to make sure that there are talent choices that let you kickstart your rotation. Currently, Palabra de las Sombras: vacío, and to a lesser extent Power Infusion, do that, but we think they’re not quite strong enough to live up to that goal. We’re planning to tweak Palabra de las Sombras: vacío to help it really deliver on getting you into Forma del Vacío quickly.

Re: MobilityEvery spec needs to have some weaknesses, but Shadow’s current immobility is fairly stark in that regard. It’s especially painful that their cycle slows to a crawl when they can’t get cast time spells off. The aforementioned change to Palabra de las Sombras: dolor generating Insanity on cast should help significantly with that. That said, we are concerned about the risk of Shadow Priests running around spamming Palabra de las Sombras: dolor constantly in PvP, and will be keeping an eye on that.

Re: UtilityShadow is in a very odd situation when it comes to utility, especially in PvP. The amount of potential utility they offer is astronomical. It’s a staggeringly long list: Cuerpo y mente, Disipar magia, Control mental, Disipación en masa, Bomba mental, Palabra de poder: escudo, Horror psíquico, Alarido psíquico, Purificar enfermedad, Encadenar no-muerto, Alivio de las Sombras, Silencio, Abrazo vampírico… probably something else I’ve forgotten offhand. But at the same time, despite the crazy number of utility spells at their fingertips, it’s actually quite hard for them to actually use many of them. Since their rotation is based on continuously generating Insanity as fast as possible, any time lost to utility is punishing, especially in Forma del Vacío, where you’re actually losing Insanity while casting other things. And then on top of that, many of the spells cost huge chunks of Insanity as well. We’re not happy with that situation, and are considering other potential options. They could probably stand to lose at least a couple spells off that list, but we’re also considering bringing back Mana as an additional resource that would just be used for limiting your usage of the many utility spells, with costs proportional to their impact.

..continued...

Re: SurvivabilityWe see a fair number of complaints that Shadow is squishy. That’s true, and intended. The offsetting factor should be their shields, and their self-healing. Toque vampírico provides very strong constant self-healing (so strong that we had to nerf it recently, as it alone outhealed the damage of outdoor quest mobs). Alivio de las Sombras is an extremely strong spammable heal. And Vampiric Embrace (the new version) is great group and self-healing. The one thing that we think isn’t living up to its goals is Dispersion. It’s extremely strong, but the DPS cost on you rotation is also quite strong. We’re going to try pausing your Insanity decay when you use it during Forma del Vacío.

Re: Rendirse a la locuraTalents as mind-blowing as this are a ton of fun. The fantasy here is extremely strong, and the gameplay concept as well. We don’t agree at all that it needs a redesign, and are totally fine with many people considering it ‘too niche’ or ‘too extreme’. We may tweak the exact implementation (increased Insanity generation vs decreased Forma del Vacío Insanity decay, for example), but are very happy with the overall design.

Thanks for the great feedback, keep it coming!

Discipline Priests

Sigma

Edit: I should add, Palabra de poder: radiancia is still showing the double-cast effect, where it has a chance to be cast a second time with the casting priest as the target.

Right, this should be fixed next build. As well as the Expiación bug in Legion scaling areas.

Palabra de poder: radiancia is indeed meant to have the Expiacións represent a large portion of its value, which is also reflected in its costing. We can make it prefer non-Atoned targets--that does remove the ability to repeatedly cast it on the same targets (for example with Grace), but that's fine since it's generally not the desired use.

Holy Paladins

Sigma

We'll continue to look at overall tuning throughout beta, especially after such a significant change. But it was most important at the moment to get the L100 row to something more reasonably conducive to having competitive options in different situations. In addition, we didn't like the somewhat tacked-on mastery bonus to Señal del Iluminado. It undermined one use case of the talent, namely, partially opting out of the importance of positioning for Lightbringer. When discussing alternatives, it became clear that we should not actually have to find a large passive healing bonus to add to any talent, simply for the purpose of competing with Señal de la fe. It's better to make the change now, with a reasonable starting point for the offsetting tuning changes that would obviously be necessary after a such a change, and have the rest of beta to reconcile the tuning.

Imperio de la ley is a new concept and we're open to feedback on how it plays or how useful it winds up being. We are planning to add default UI support for the changed range, and we recognize it may be difficult to use naturally until then (aside for Druids: the same is true of Balance Affinity). We also want it to affect all spells that you expect to be able to use on people that are shown as within range (Limpiar, Bendición de protección, etc.).

Totemic Projection

Desvin

Thanks. We definitely understand your concerns and we're looking at ways we can improve how this spell is currently working in PvP situations. Sorry I don't have any specifics to share on it now, but wanted to let you know we have heard you.

Alpha Honor Reset

Desvin

Will you restore them?

Unfortunately, we will not. I understand why that is frustrating. The time will come where we will boost all of the character templates to level 50, but we aren't at that point. We need to testing the honor leveling experience. Once we introduce templates at honor level 50, we won't be able to reverse it. We won't be able to test the experience of leveling through the system any longer.

Ashran

Desvin

We understand that not everyone enjoys Ashran, but we also receive feedback from some people that they really enjoy Ashran. Since the content is fairly recent, we will support it for a while longer. But we won't be offering any unique rewards from Ashran going forward.

Comentarios

Comentario de mathiaslindberg

on 2016-03-18T13:38:34-05:00

Hopefully there will be more people out in the world if their Order Hall isn't a button away. Having a 15 minute cooldown Garrison Hearthstone meant you could constantly go back to your isolated palace.

Comentario de Infamushium

on 2016-03-18T14:03:51-05:00

I kinda like the portals to our class hall(s) and I don't. I mean it will hopefully get people out into the world, at least for the first few months, but then that just means Dalaran will become super crowded once people hit level cap and start running nothing but randoms, LFR, and/or normal/heroic/mythic raids.

I still think Warlocks should be one of the classes to be able to port there just because of class design. Same goes for Mages.

Comentario de Brainst0rm

on 2016-03-18T14:07:03-05:00

I kinda like the portals to our class hall(s) and I don't. I mean it will hopefully get people out into the world, at least for the first few months, but then that just means Dalaran will become super crowded once people hit level cap and start running nothing but randoms, LFR, and/or normal/heroic/mythic raids.

I still think Warlocks should be one of the classes to be able to port there just because of class design. Same goes for Mages.

Yeah...I'm worried there aren't going to be many reasons to be anywhere *other* than Dalaran.

Comentario de Infamushium

on 2016-03-18T14:13:07-05:00

Yeah...I'm worried there aren't going to be many reasons to be anywhere *other* than Dalaran.

Well aside from visiting our class hall(s), there probably will be no reason to go anywhere other then Dalaran once we hit max level and start on the path towards raiding.

Comentario de KryzM

on 2016-03-18T14:13:09-05:00

Hopefully there will be more people out in the world if their Order Hall isn't a button away. Having a 15 minute cooldown Garrison Hearthstone meant you could constantly go back to your isolated palace.

So?

Anyway, to make hunters to take a flight path its stupid. Everyone else can just walk to a portal, we have to wait to the other side of the continent to get to our hall.

Comentario de perculia

on 2016-03-18T14:15:38-05:00

Hey - you guys are right that Mages still have a teleport. We've updated the article accordingly.

Comentario de Infamushium

on 2016-03-18T14:17:11-05:00

Hey - you guys are right that Mages still have a teleport. We've updated the article accordingly.

Now they just need to give one to the Warlocks.LOL

Comentario de tiggerbox29

on 2016-03-18T16:13:34-05:00

Oh lord they have screwed up royal with that warcraft movie poster. Garona has lost her green skin HAHA

Comentario de jimbobaus

on 2016-03-18T16:20:12-05:00

Hunters have to take a flight path halfway across the continent while everyone else gets an instant portal? Well that sucks!

Comentario de moosecat11

on 2016-03-18T16:23:37-05:00

Not having a unique spell/gate to teleport with anymore is kind of sad. Hopefully people wont be crowding the portals like jerks.

Anyway, what's with Garona's skin...GG?

Comentario de ahunter8056

on 2016-03-18T16:23:40-05:00

So, new Warcraft trailer this morning, new one tomorrow, and another new one on Sunday? This is great! I like that new poster, but wish there was a landscape version.

Comentario de Warulfen

on 2016-03-18T16:59:53-05:00

Hunters have to take a flight path halfway across the continent while everyone else gets an instant portal? Well that sucks!

Well hey, who needs the spirit of a soaring eagle when you can get a flight path mount as old as the game, right?

No, but seriously Blizz. At least let us have a portal, OR, make the flight instant!

Comentario de JRJathome

on 2016-03-18T17:05:05-05:00

Now, they just have to make sure Dalaran has portals to every other major city, so that we may finally stop hearthing at Shrine.

Currently, there's portals to every city except for Wrath Dalaran. However, there's a portal to Shrine which you can use to get to Wrath Dalaran, or there's also a portal to Wyrmrest Temple.

Comentario de Pessimissed

on 2016-03-18T17:21:16-05:00

Can the Warlock's Beholder please shoot the eye lasers out of it's eyes?

Comentario de Nexsa

on 2016-03-18T17:58:33-05:00

I don't play a hunter as my main, but I can't help but feel sorry for them having to take a flight path.

Comentario de Random0056

on 2016-03-18T18:09:50-05:00

Cool animations for Demonology, especially the pets. Far as getting to a class order hall, I think it's okay with how they're portraying them.

Comentario de cephadex

on 2016-03-18T18:22:00-05:00

The whole idea of a portal to the Emerald Dream from a city devoted to the arcane seems wrong to me, but then again, the idea of a BE mage having his order hall at Dalaran is wrong too, so whatev.

Comentario de Rankkor

on 2016-03-18T18:50:38-05:00

I'm really sad at the removal of class spell teleports to the order halls. Some of them were quite cool and creative, like Warriors literally jumping to heaven, or hunters summoning an eagle to ferry them forward. This doesn't affect me much personally since I'm a Death Knight, thus my Death Gate aint going anywhere, but still saddens me that the other classes lose their portals.

I hope this is one of their calls they'll reverse, similar to the water strider fiasco. This is still relatively early in development.

Comentario de Castrum

on 2016-03-18T18:50:52-05:00

No blue post on the fact that half of Twitter called them out on Shadow's animations still looking vanilla-quality and Voidform being Shadowform with five minutes of development work added so it could have swaying shoulder-tentacles?

Comentario de Grabovsky

on 2016-03-18T19:39:20-05:00

So because blizz majorly screwed up faction cities in WoD(not having them in karabor/FFR city) we get punished and have to head to dal every time we need to go to our order hall? I swear, blizz just hates us.